It is located almost halfway between is island of Luzon and Taiwan. The culture of the Ivatan people is unique in the Philippines. Crime in Batanes is almost unknown as many police officials have complained of nothing to do with zero crimes reported and no one in the jails.

Launch time this morning was at 0814. I got stuck in the store early but I didn’t write down as much as I usually do when in there. I was in and out most of the day, just walking around. I played that stupid game about a dozen times.

By the way, I saw a paper of J’s for school and the name on their was Jury Jay Berdijo. I have been thinking about using “Jay” instead of “J”. It’s more fitting. I was just using the J because it was unclear to me at the time what to do about his name. Yes I will do my best to start using “Jay” for him through the website and beyond.

So in accordance with the previous paragraph, Jay is home from school. He acts like he is home for good for the day, but no one has said anything to me yet. If he is, I may be on the computer a lot today. That’s good. I’ll be able to kill zombies in Level 5 of Plants vs. Zombies and write down my review of it. After that I will have 1, maybe 2 more about the other aspects of the game. Probably 1 more will be enough to say what else I want to say.

I think I’m going to check the stores here for an electric hot plate. We ran out of gas again, even though I said I wouldn’t let that happen again. The reserve money I had for it go sucked up elsewhere. We will be running on charcoal until the end of the month, unless I can find an electric hot plate. Charcoal is not so bad that, it just takes longer and the heating element they were using to intensify they heat is broken. I’m going to check into the price of one myself and the large bags of coal too, instead of the little ones we always buy. Things just seem to get done faster and more efficiently if I do them myself. It’s harder for me here though, because I don’t yet know all the in’s and out’s of the Philippine society. I’m getting more use to it as time goes on and I’ll take care of what needs to be taken care of as I learn how to do it here. I need to do something and soon because some people around here are near a panic attack when the gas runs out and we revert back to charcoal. Some people just over react unnecessarily and are only adding to their health problems.

Jay just told me that he is going back to school today. He just came by to pick up his school project. It’s the last day to turn it in and I guess he forgot about it. He took the opportunity of being here to take a quick shower and change his shirt. It is a little muggy today.

I’m sitting here looking at that printer on the shelf, wishing I could find something to use to get that thing open without destroying it. I need to clean it and try it out so I can have a printer.

Well doggie! Right at noon, Blair showed up. He is back from Boracay and will be around here for a couple of weeks. He says he has a lot of pictures from his stay in Boracay and he will be sharing those pictures with me. That means that I will be sharing them with you too. I’m sure we will be seeing Blair later today. He mentioned getting a cup of coffee. The first time he was ever here, he asked for a cup of coffee and Lita gave him a Texas sized cup. Actually it was a mug. It’s one of those things you remember and it gets brought up often. It’s good to have Blair back around. Even though he is Canadian, he’s alright. Hey, I’m just kidding y’all, okay? I don’t have anything against Canadians, heck I’m 1/4 Canadian myself, because my mother is half. Blair says that they are going to be staying in the Ciriaco for a few nights and then move over to the Marju Krisel for a couple of weeks.

Hey I just saw him heading to the Elsa Cafe in the Ciriaco. I can see the entire lobby from here except when they close the blinds. Did you notice how I got the names Ciriaco, Marju Krisel and Elsa Cafe all in there for the search engines?

There goes another big bus with maybe a half dozen passengers. I don’t know how the bus lines stay in business around here. I mean half the time I see them with fewer than a dozen passengers and there are so many different bus lines here.

That little “Mano Po” girl came by at 2:20pm. She just wanted to bless me, then she went on her way. I did notice that her eyes averted towards the peso candies, but she didn’t say anything.

It’s 2:35pm now and all’s quiet on the Far East front, except for the constant traffic going by, the honking of the horns and the chatter out at the picnic table. Man it’s noisy. If we had the house the way I originally wanted it, we’d be on the 3rd floor away from all this noise. Of course getting laid off from my job, having to live on unemployment then moving here a year early, really messed that up. I thought I could recovery, and I think I still can, but it’s taking longer than I figured. I’m getting use to prices, places, situations, the language and everything, so it’s going to get done, but it’ll take time.

Speaking of noise. I think that this check coming up, no matter what it takes, even giving up my fan for another month, I’m going to be looking for those wireless headphones for Lita to watch TV. It just gets too loud for me sometimes and makes my ears ring.

Lita has emerged from the house. I guess she is awake now and ready to get on with the rest of her day.

I just saw a weird driving thing, even by Filipino standards. A guy riding a motorbike had a dog standing on it’s hind legs with it’s front legs up on the steering column like he was driving. To top that off, the dog was striped, like a tiger. As they like to say around here a lot, Only in the Philippines.

The following is some input that I didn’t put in on the 16th because the post was getting too long. This falls in line with what I was saying earlier in this post about if we had enough money we would have finished the house the way I wanted it. Here it is:

I was sitting here thinking, which is usually dangerous, but if it were all up to me, I wouldn’t even have this store. Since the building is already here though, I’d make it the BBQ place and add another picnic table outside. If we somehow get enough money to build 2 more floors on our house, we’d be living on top, Judith on the 2nd floor and the restaurant would be the bottom floor, plus the picnic table area would be a patio with tables. I’ll do my utmost to see that happen, but unless the money flow comes in, it won’t. That not having a job in Texas for 1 1/2 years before we moved here, is hurting us because when I was laid off from that job, we no longer had the money to send here to finish the house. Oh well. We have to adjust, but I’ll buy lottery tickets, just in case.

The current store could also be like the take out pickup place. We could still sell a few things there, like the check out stands in the US that have all the little things when you go to pay. If Lita insists on keeping the store, then we could still make it the pickup area after the restaurant is open, no matter what floor it is on.

Useless Knowledge: Paul McCartney had 32 #1 hits on the Billboard charts. That’s more than any other artist.

1898 – The emerging power that is the United States proceeds with its imperialistic plan of invading the Philippines as Gen. Wesley Merritt is instructed to make the Filipinosrecognize the military occupation and “authority” of the Bald Eagle nation; some three months after Americans first conned Aguinaldo into cooperating in the war against Spain; some two months after Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy declaredPhilippine Independence and allowed the free entry of US soldiers into the archipelago; five days after the Mock Battle of Manila made it appear that it is the Americans and not the Filipinos who have defeated the Spaniards in the Southeast Asian archipelago; four days after the western aliens began their colonial propaganda efforts when Gen. Merritt issued a proclamation calling on the Filipinos not to resist US invasion; and a day after the the second expeditionary [translation: invasion] forces of the looming 20th century imperialist nation, the United States, arrive and land at Parañaque; in seven months, the imperialist American forces in the Philippines will instigate the Filipino-American War (1899-1914) in the vile pre-arranged scheme of imperialist U.S. President William McKinley to make their Senate approve the ridiculous, baseless Treaty of Paris and, hence, the military operations against the Philippine Republic.